From 20 November 2010 to 12 December 2010, there will be a festive display of artist-designed Christmas cards including cards by Enid Marx, which are in Compton Verney's British Folk Art collection.

A successful designer, Enid Marx was well known for her designs for stamps, posters and seating fabric for London Transport in the post-war period.

What the folk say is an opportunity to get involved with Compton Verney's collection of British Folk Art. It is also a chance to question what Folk Art is, how it is valued and whether it still exists.

A number of artists and curators have been invited to select folk art objects and re-display them amongst our other collections of Chinese bronzes, Neapolitan paintings, British portraits and Northern European art.

Everyone is invited to submit images of what they think folk art is: hand-made toys, painted signs, pictures, or even tattoos...

A selection of images and objects will be chosen for display at Compton Verney from March to December 2011.

Behind an impressive 1901 terracotta façade in the seaside town of Llandudno is Wales’ leading gallery of contemporary art, Mostyn. It has recently completed an expansion in which old and new buildings were integrated in a design by architect, Dominic Williams.

Peter Moores Foundation has supported the main reopening show, We Have The Mirrors, We Have The Plans which includes work from twenty-five artists and artist partnerships. The exhibition provides an extensive picture of contemporary art practice in Wales and expresses a broad range of current concerns. The title comes from a text by Craig Wood,

"Does art reflect society? Is what art is today what society does tomorrow? Beware... We are the artists; we have the mirrors, we have the plans."

Treasures from Compton Verney’s Neopolitan Collection are back on display after being on loan to Ritorno al Barocco (Back to the Baroque), a major exhibition project in Naples, displayed across six museums: Museo di Capodimonte, Castel Sant’Elmo, Certosa e Museo di San Martino, Museo Duca di Martina, Museo Pignatelli and the Palazzo Reale.

Sub-titled ‘from Caravaggio to Vanvitelli’ the project comprised six thematic exhibitions documenting the immense flowering of Baroque art and culture in Naples over a period of 150 years, from 1606 to 1759. More than 500 works were brought together from private collections and international museums. Eight paintings on loan from Compton Verney included works by Cavallino, Solimena, Ruoppolo and Gaspar van Wittel (Vanvitelli), featured in the exhibition of Sacred and Profane History at the Museo di Capodimonte, as well as a statue of St Michael the Archangel by Vaccaro and a Trapani coral mirror. Visitors can now enjoy these works at Compton Verney in the Neapolitan Collection rooms.

The Compton Verney Collections are continually growing and changing. New acquisitions are for the Northern European collection:

Pieter Huys:
The Descent into Limbo, and

Galeazzo Mondella, called Moderno:
Hercules overcoming Antaeus, bronze plaquette.

Compton Verney’s collection of paintings from Naples includes four paintings of Vesuvius erupting, one example, seen below, by Pierre Jacques Volaire, An eruption of Vesuvius by Moonlight, is based on an actual eruption in 1774. This exhibition ranges from early engravings to an explosive series of paintings by Joseph Wright, J M W Turner and Andy Warhol.

The Daily Telegraph

'Nothing captures eruptions better than art, says the curator of a pyroclastic new show, James Hamilton. (He continues,) "Compton Verney’s collection includes a superb selection of Neapolitan paintings. Central among these are a fiery pair of works whose subject is the erupting Mount Vesuvius, by the French crown-prince of 18th-century volcano painting, Pierre-Jacques Volaire. Building on these, we will open a show that celebrates the artistic outpourings which volcanic eruptions have triggered over the past five centuries.

The Observer

‘Roth's Surtsey prints have never, to my knowledge, been shown in Britain before. They are among the marvels of Volcano at Compton Verney, a show of paintings, prints, films and more from Turner to Warhol and beyond, all centring on these towering infernos. It is a most unusual exhibition in that it could hardly be more revealing of both art and nature... Anyone visiting this riveting show will hear the onset of a volcanic eruption from the moment they enter. It is a soundpiece, one of two exhibits that attempt to give a visceral sense of threat. The other is James P Graham's multi-screen film of Stromboli's flames and smoke, igniting the sea and blacking out the sun. It is frankly horrifying.’

It is a Dagger Axe (ge) of the Late Shang Dynasty in the 11th century BC. It was made of bronze about 3300 years ago and is 24.2 centimeters long.